Very sad news indeed. Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore International and the man behind Atari, has passed away this past weekend. At 83, he passed away, surrounded by family and friends. People like this don't come in dozens, so we lost one of the great men of computing.

"Ahh the old Commodore vs Atari wars in the early 80's. It was quite something when Tramiel "switched sides" in 1984.

Isn't it a bit of paradox, that Commodore's "flagship" has been designed by former Atari employees (associates?) - I mean Jay Miner's team - and Atari's "flagship" (ST) has been built by the people (when left Commodore along with Tramiel), that made C-64? "

I was actually irritated by that. I didn't know until years later that Jay Miner had created both the Atari 8-bit Line and the Amiga Line.

Looking back at it, it was obvious though. I had an Atari 800XL, which I absolutely loved. So many things on that looked fantastic, and I recall my friend having so many issues with his Commodore 64 (remember the speed load cartridge you absolutely HAD to have?)

Well, when it came time for the 16bit systems to come out, I naturally followed the Atari brand, and he followed the Amiga brand. The Amigas were particularly better than the Atari ST in Graphics and Sound. I had managed though to get the Atari Mega STe, which had comparable palette and stereo sound. Alas (yeah, I had to use that word, it's too unused), most software didn't support the extended features of the STe, not to mention some weird compatibility issues.

Now I still have my Mega STe, plus an Atari TT030. But I had to add to my collection an Amiga A4000D, which I've upgraded with PCI and a Radeon + Network card.

Even though it still has the stock CPU, it seems faster than my Core 2 Quad in some ways.

Hats off to you Jack Tramiel, for helping the computer industry along.

Seems Atari only really went down hill after the ownership was passed onto Sam Tramiel.